Ella

The stench is the worst part of trying to find supplies. My tongue is dry and my throat is sandy, but above all, the foul smell is what really hits me. I try to breathe out of my mouth, but since it's not a habit, I keep finding myself catching air through my nostrils, which causes me to gag. How many people have died here? The thought sends a chill down my body. I don't want to see anymore dead people for as long as I live. I don't care if they're human or Norovian.

I push the morbid thoughts away, and walk towards what looks like a leaning house. I don't know if it's safe to go inside, the windows all shattered, the roof half caved in, but I have to find water and food, and maybe even another backpack so we both can have our own.

The door is hanging from its hinges, and I touch my index finger to the wood, and try to push it in. Just at the contact, it falls in and I squeal from surprise. Collecting my breath, I cough and wave away the dust that has caught up from the fallen door, and slowly step inside. The odor is even worse in here, making my eyes water from the smell.

I cover my mouth and nose with my palm, before continuing through what I think was the living room. I can't quite tell, for nothing is here but ripped up flooring and what looks like a tattered old seat in the corner. The look of this place gives me chills, and I hurry through to find the kitchen, not knowing how long the house will hold out with me inside.

I walk through a doorway on the other side of the living room, and find myself in a bathroom. A pipe is coming up through the floor and broken porcelain is scattered everywhere I can see. I leave before I cut myself on something, and walk through another doorway. This time, I find something that looks like it could be a kitchen.

Broken cupboards are lined up along the walls, half of the cupboard doors are hanging or have fallen to some other part of the room. A fridge is tipped over along with the stove, and I try to squeeze through, but realizing I have to climb over the stove. Sighing, I lift myself with what little energy that's left in me, and make my way inside the room.

I immediately head for the cupboards and see what I can find. The smell, still foul and sickening, doesn't seem to bother me as much now, and I'm thankful. That means I can use both my hands and work a lot faster so I can leave this house as quickly as possible.

Shifting through the lower cabinets, I find broken cans of fruit, soup, pie filling, and different kinds of meat. Pushing away all the opened cans, I try to find ones that aren't broken. Luckily, I find a couple unopened cans of fruit cocktail. It isn't much, but it's more then we had before.

Searching the next couple cabinets, I only find another jar of peanut butter, my stomach rolling the wrong way at the thought of eating peanut butter again, but I grab it anyway, and stuff it into the pack.

There wasn't much here, and I decide that maybe I should try and go upstairs to look for a bag or something that could hold supplies. But when I make my way over the fallen stove and attempt to find the stairs, I hear my name being called. "Ella! Ella, where are you?!" Adjusting the backpack on my shoulder, I hurry out the front door and call back to him.

In just a few minutes, I see Dean stumbling over ruins as he tries to make his way over. "What did you find?" I sling the bag off my shoulder and open it to reveal the two cans of fruit and another jar of peanut butter. At the sight of the peanut butter, Dean wrinkles his nose, but doesn't say anything.

"What about you?" I ask, hoping he found some water.

"I actually found this," he beams, while holding up a tattered book bag that is similar to the one I am carrying, only in worse shape. "And I found a pipe--in what used to be a kitchen--running, so I tried to find some container or whatever, just until we find actually bottled water, and I found one." He pulls out a Rubbermaid container filled with sloshing water, and my mouth tightens at the sight. "Take it, drink as much as you need, I already had my share before coming to find you. I didn't know if you already had water or not, and I knew you needed some." I can't even thank him. At the sight of water I seem to have lost all my voice.

Taking it and opening it, I drink the water in what seems like seconds, not even carrying about anything else. "Tell me," I begin, my breath heavy from not breathing for a few seconds. "This really was from a kitchen and not toilet water."

"Shame, you figured it out," he smiles, but I can tell he's only kidding. At least, I hope he's only kidding. "I think we should stay together now, just in case."

"In case what?" I ask, my throat and mouth already feeling so much better, but I could drink another container if it was in front of me.

"If something falls on you or me from these houses or whatever, we wouldn't even know. It could take days to find each other and it might be too late."

"That's a bit dramatic, just scream and I'd find you or you'd find me."

"What if we were suffocating and couldn't scream? Then what?" I just shrug and let him think whatever. "Ella?" He mumbles after a moment of walking and wondering where to explore next.

"Hm?"

"I know you don't think I care, and I know I'm a jerk, okay? I'm the biggest jerk there is, but I do. I don't want anything to happen to you and that's why I help you. I don't help you to throw it in your face and yeah, you cry a lot. But your world is falling apart, you have every right to." I want to tell him that we've been through this before, that we've said all this before, but I can't. I'm tired of arguing and fighting with him, it's all we ever do and I blame myself for a lot of the reasons we fight.

"Dean, what if you were upset and I tried to help then later on when I was mad you pushed it in my face? You literally just told me hours ago that you didn't give care about me, that I'm just a nuisance and you can't wait to get me off your back, am I right?" He runs a hand over his face, and sighs.

"I only said that because you wouldn't see the truth. You're so eager to believe a lie than what's really going on."

"You lied? I thought your species were so honest." I scoff, getting irritated with him once again. "If you know I have feelings, why do you say those awful things?"

"I have feeling too, Ella, but you've never once cared about them. When we argue you throw things at me and I throw them back and you act like you're the innocent one, when you're just as guilty! I have lied, okay? I do lie, what is the term you use 'I'm human'? Well we have faults just as much as you and if you weren't so racist about my species you could see that we aren't different from humans. I'll be damned if I didn't want to be a human at least once. I wanted to blend in and just live a normal life, but no. Your kind always wanted to test me and poke our brains no matter how many earthly years we've lived here. Test after test, I could never blend in, then all the girls at school threw themselves at me, and I liked it. You know why I liked it, Ella? Because it was normal. I felt normal for once. So look, now you have ammo to throw at me later, too." We both just stand here, and I try to look everywhere but at him, despite how much I can feel his eyes burning into me. He wanted to be human? I never knew that, I never would have even thought that. We don't know anything about each other, and that's where most of the arguments occur because we don't understand one another.

"And I'm sorry for ruining your life at school, okay? I didn't mean to. It was normal too, and I know that's a crappy excuse, but it's what people do." I finally look at him, my eyes hard just like my expression.

"Do you really think that I hold everything against you because of how you were in school? I can't forget how you treated me, and I will always hold memories of how that made me feel, but when we argue it's not because of that. We don't understand each other, we never have. For whatever reason, I don't know. I don't know why we have it out for each other or why we're always at each other's throats. Maybe we were always supposed to be rivalries, because that's what we're best at being." His yellow eyes stare into my brown ones, and I still can't help but remember the day I first saw him. I wanted to believe his species wasn't bad, I wanted to believe, but he took all ounce of hope that I seen and tossed it into the trash.

He doesn't say anything, just stands there and looks at me. I don't know how I feel about all this new information and about everything we've just talked about, but what I do know is that nothing will change. No matter what, he'll always be the cocky, rude boy from school and I'll always be his punching bag. But as we stand here just staring at each other, I truly wonder if that's what I want.

"Let's go and find some more stuff, I hope we can find bottled water and more food," he says, still looking at me, before scratching his neck and walking away. I sigh, and follow him, hoping we find food soon and something to use that could open up the fruit cans.

"Let's look in here," he suggests, before pointing to what looks like the most crumbled house in the town so far.

"Seriously? What are we going to find in there?"

"You'll be surprised how much you could find in nothing but ruins." I want to roll my eyes, but I don't. I follow him and crouch in the doorway, before realizing that once inside, you can actually stand up. "We need to get out of here fast though, for we don't know how much time it has before it may crumble completely."

"Okay," I mutter, but before we take another step, we hear crying in the distance. "Hello?" I ask, my feet following the voice.

"H-e-lp," it croaks, and my stomach seems to have dropped as I try to make my way as fast as I can to where I hear the voice. I can already feel the emotion swelling up inside, and I force myself to hold it down. Dean calls out behind me, telling me to wait, but I can't. If someone needs help, I have to help them. I can't just let them die, I would feel so terrible if I--

I stop in my tracks, Dean almost running into me from behind, when my eyes meet the scene.

Before us, is a woman. A woman with what looks like a pipe protruding from her chest. "Hel-p me, p-lease," she begs, and that's when I see her eyes. They're yellow. She's a Norovian.

"Dean, what--what do we do?" I mutter, my lip quivering.

"We can't, Ella, we can't do anything. I can't even believe she's still alive. We have to let her go, okay? She needs to go." His voice is hard, no emotion showing whatsoever, and I want to slap him. What does he mean we can't do anything? Then I realize that we can't. What could we possibly do?

"Put her out of her misery then, she's in so much pain," I'm crying by now, my chest heaving and my words are all mumbled. "She doesn't deserve this." I can feel arms wrap around me, and usher me out of the room.

"I can't, it's not in our nature to hurt another Norovian, not even to put them out of their misery."

"Animal!" I shout, pushing him off of me. "She's suffering! She's--she's--" but I lose my words as his arms come around me once more, and I cling to him. I cling so tight and mutter sorry, I'm so sorry, over and over again. Because I am. Norovian lives mean just as much as human one's, and I was inhuman to think otherwise. A soul is a soul, and I cry out my shame in my enemy's chest.